Shocker: Warren Announces Support For “Medicare for All”

The last time the Internet Archive Wayback Machine crawled Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “issues” website page on health care was July 12, 2017, and that version shows she wanted to preserve the “gains” of Obamacare. Of course, not satisfied with serving in a mere caretaker role, as a true progressive Warren views her work as an ongoing project which can never be fully completed. The archived version of her page carefully concludes with the notion that “we” must “do more.” Well, we now know what “doing more” means: “Medicare for All.” And the first paragraph of Warren’s blog post endorsing this proposal of Bernie Sanders’ mentions “the children” of Massachusetts, naturally. So many crimes and outrages have been committed by the Left in the name of these ubiquitous “children.”

The rest of Warren’s blog post consists of the standard set of liberal talking points on the health care issue: that only the government can take on a task of this enormity, that we live in the “richest” country in the world and somehow this means there’s an obligation to take care of every single soul from cradle to grave, and the usual declaration that “health care is a basic human right.” Warren strategically turns on the water works reminiscing about the time her father had a heart attack. And, of course, she names a bogeyman to fight: the insurance and drug companies and their lobbyists. These narratives are so much more moving when they point to a ready-made, mustache-twirling villain.

Warren’s announcement regarding single-payer comes as no surprise. The Obamacare incrementalism described in earlier versions of her website were always aimed at single payer as the final outcome. Really, that was the plan when Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965. Medicare was never going to remain just for old folks and the disabled (i.e. Medicaid) forever. Government always expands–it’s a hard and consistent rule. Harry S. Truman aimed at establishing universal health care insurance with his Fair Deal circa 1949, but couldn’t quite pull it off. But the Left never gives up, and never stops pushing for its bottomless agenda. Obamacare was a great leap forward on this path. Warren has now clearly identified the next stage in her approach to health care that will characterize her 2018 run for re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Since all three branches of government are controlled by the Republicans, it is unlikely that Bernie’s bill will get very far, even with Warren as its cheerleader. So does this mean that Warren will also take up the “Medicare for All” banner if she decides on a presidential run in 2020? Let’s see what the voters of Massachusetts do in 2018 first. The folks of Massachusetts have been known to elect Republican senators and governors from time to time. And there are rumblings that the voters are growing tired of Absentee Warren’s perpetual jaunts around the country grandstanding and promoting her books.